Did you know that the old children’s nursery rhyme ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’ is about the Black Plague that killed millions of people in Europe? We all heard nursery rhymes as kids from our parents to lull us to sleep (or at the very least to stop us being so loud!), but many don’t realise that many nursery rhymes have dark origins.

Jason Cavanagh explores this morbid fact in his new play Kiss Them All Soundly, retelling well known nursery rhymes Simple Simon, Mary Had A Little Lamb and Georgie Porgie as dark stories of pain and suffering. Kids will prefer the standard sugarcoated versions they’ve heard at kindergarten, but adults will get a kick out of it.